Smooth muscle alpha-actin gene activity appears in promyocardial cells well before cardiac myocyte differentiation and is down-regulated during the onset of rhythmic contractility and cardiac morphogenesis. The levels of LIM-only CRP2 correlated well with smooth muscle gene activity. Cardiomyocyte-specific expression of CRP2 in transgenic mice showed robust expression of smooth muscle cell-spec...

Abstract Background and Objective: It has been shown that oxidative stress increases in diabetes and it has an important role in its development and subsequent complications. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of acute resistance exercise on oxidative stress in skeletal muscle and cardiac tissues of streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats. Materials and Methods: Twenty male ...

The mechanisms that control cardiac contractility are complex. Recent work we conducted in vertebrate skeletal muscle identified a new state of myosin, the super-relaxed state (SRX), which had a very low metabolic rate. To determine whether this state also exists in cardiac muscle we used quantitative epi-fluorescence to measure single nucleotide turnovers by myosin in bundles of relaxed permea...

The MADS-box transcription factor MEF2 is expressed specifically in developing cardiac, somatic, and visceral muscle cell lineages during Drosophila embryogenesis and is required for myoblast differentiation and muscle morphogenesis. To define the mechanisms that regulate Mef2 transcription, we have analyzed the Mef2 upstream region for sequences sufficient to recapitulate the expression patter...

Transcription of the chicken cardiac troponin T (cTNT) gene in myocardial cells requires upstream sequences not required for expression of this gene in embryonic skeletal muscle cells. Deletion analysis shows that the segment between nucleotides -247 and -201 (numbered relative to the transcription initiation site at +1) is capable of conferring cardiac specific expression to a "minimal" cTNT p...

The intrinsic regenerative capacity of human fetal cardiac mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) has not been fully characterized. Here we demonstrate that we can expand cells with characteristics of cardiovascular progenitor cells from the MSC population of human fetal hearts. Cells cultured on cardiac muscle laminin (LN)-based substrata in combination with stimulation of the canonical Wnt/β-cateni...

Troponin complex Cardiac Muscle is a unique type of involuntary striated muscle which resembles skeletal muscle in many of its features. Cardiac muscle has several structural and functional di erences as compared to skeletal muscle. Structurally it is smaller, usually mononuclear, arranged more in series as opposed to parrallel, it has a greater number of mitochondria (cardiac muscle is almost ...